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Thomas Lipton has entered in competition with the American vessel. From all accounts the Shamrock is in design, rigging, and racing qualities far ahead of any English boat that has hitherto sought to wrest victory, with possession of the international trophy, from American yachtsmen. In her trial-spin off Sandy Hook she has shown herself a surprise to our best judges of seagoing racing craft and won hearty admiration for her splendid sailing qualities. What she may be able to do when pitted against her great American competitor will shortly now be known: till then we must seek to repress the hungering desire-deep, no doubt, in the breast of all-to witness the race, where the Fates have decreed that to be impossible, and echo the wish of all true sportsmen, on whatever side may be their interests or sympathies, that the best boat may win!

Admiral Dewey's

Return

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It is not necessary to be a jingo, still less an expansionist, to welcome the return of Admiral Dewey and pay him the humble tribute of our homage. Nor, happily, need we be a party man to greet the hero of Manila Bay on his triumphant return to his native shores. Than George Dewey there are few men who have served their country, as soldiers or sailors, who are better worthy the demonstration which New York and the nation at large are about to make in his honor. When the war with Spain broke out, Fortune favored him in finding him near by, in Chinese waters, when the order came to him to seek out and attack the Spanish fleet at the Philippines. The Fates further favored him in his daring entry into Manila Bay, where he sighted and with cool judgment and consummate tactics instantly reduced to impotence the enemy's warships. With sailor-like dispatch and thoroughness did Dewey execute his important mission, and give his country and the world the first impressive lesson either had had of western maritime prowess. The feat was more worthy of honor in its utter freedom from boastfulness, when its commander had to make report to Washington of the action, as well as in the welcome assurance with which the brief dispatch closed-"the squadron is uninjured, and only a few men are slightly wounded!" The achievement, there is little need to remind anyone to-day, was a

signal triumph for American dash and strategy as well as disciplined valor, and it deservedly won honor and fame for Dewey and his cool-headed and plucky command. The hero of it now returns, like Themistocles after the battle in the Bay of Salamis, to receive the meed of a grateful nation's honor, and modestly to seek retirement by his native hearth.

It is characteristic of Admiral Dewey that he returns to his native shores not to enter politics or to put himself in the intriguing hands of party manipulators. His patriotism is of the national rather than of the factional stripe; but of politics he happily wants nothing, and in this matter it is hoped that his wishes will be respected, since he desires that his services for his country shall close with the splendid work he has done, and done so honorably, in his own special sphere. We speak of this chiefly in the Admiral's own behalf, and to emphasize what he has himself so wisely, doughtily, and unqualifiedly expressed,—to be no man's man; but to be suffered, with dignity and selfrespect, to retire on his own well-earned laurels and enjoy, at his own simple fireside, the repose his advancing years and great services to his country have so well earned for him. Let New York, as it surely will, magnificently welcome him, and the nation, in its gratitude, give him glad greeting; but let us beware of imposing any burdens or honors on him which he neither seeks nor desires, and refrain from unkind enthusiasms that would only bring him trouble and, maybe, place him in a false position.

Presidential Philippines Policy

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Prayer, and the Our "civilizing mission,» which gets along lamely in the Philippines, President McKinley has lately been assuring the nation, is now to be actively propagated. Addressing the men of the Tenth Pennsylvania Regiment at Pittsburg on their return from Manila the other day, the President took occasion to commend the brave fellows who remained at the front and those who were now setting out to take the place of those who had returned from the islands. Referring to the latter, "Our prayers," he said, "go with them, and more men and munitions if required." The collocation of prayers and gunpowder seemed to us at first a little peculiar, if not a bit profane. We can imagine an enemy (we mean him at Luzon)

making an impatient contemptuous reference to it, with an allusion to something like cant, in connection with the official commander-in-chief of a great humanitarian nation, who had come up to the White House from peaceful and religious Canton. Perhaps more in evidence, however, would be the smile-wreathed face of the enemy at home (Edward Atkinson, or Godkin, of the New York "Evening Post," for instance, or other of the anti-expansionist "traitors"), who must have chuckled over the infelicitous phrase as a strange one in the mouth of him who is responsible for the "benevolent assimilation » idea as the policy of the United States in the tropics, and for forcing liberation at the cannon's mouth upon people whom the accident of war and the lust of national expansion had put for the time being at our mercy. Nor would those enemies (let us call them "traitors, since our new-fledged imperialists like the word), be without reason did they wonder at the notion that the new legions representing the might and power of this great nation, consecrated to the work of humanity in the New World, are to be let loose in a new campaign of havoc -sent forward with "prayers" and the most frightful munitions of war - on a people whose crime-as it was ours a century and a quarter ago-is to desire selfgovernment and freedom from a foreign yoke. How little, they might naturally ask themselves, were these renewed war preparations-plus the "prayers"-likely to win over a sturdy and brave people fighting for their independence, and who from the first had grave doubts of our peace overtures and other seductive professions, which they have had good reason to know are wholly at variance with the aims and purposes of liberators.

"You," continued President McKinley, still addressing the returned Tenth Regiment, "have enlarged the map of the United States and extended the jurisdiction of American liberty." Is the latter affirmation, we presume to ask, cynicism or jingo bombast in the guise of a halftruth? "You made secure and permanent," adds Mr. McKinley, "the victory of Dewey." Again we take exception to this Presidential utterance, and ask, first, if Dewey's victory needed to be made more secure and permanent than it was

that

is, using the words "secure" and "permanent » as applied, not in an expansionist sense, but with reference to the precise

work so admirably done by him which was given him to accomplish. Secondly, we venture to inquire, is the statement, in its expansionist sense, a fact, or merely a McKinleyite way of making palatable to this country and accustoming its people to the idea that we have laid our hands on the Filipinos' country as an inalienable, "secure," and "permanent " United States possession?

The truth is, there is much in public talk and in the public prints to-day with reference to these luckless old-time possessions of Spain that is wanting in truth and honesty as well as in good taste and ethical propriety. Not a little of it is on a par with Senator Frye's recent outburst of sanctimonious jingoism, in which, speaking of our occupation and prospective retention of the Philippines, he exclaims, "God opened the door, pushed us in, and closed it. No man on earth or angel in heaven can now take us out!" This, if it is not blasphemy, is the veriest drivel of imperialism. Much more becoming would it be if the militant Senator, who seems so familiar with God's doings, would call upon Heaven to purge the acquisitive hearts of this nation and sanctify its motives of conquest. Well, also, would it be if he would penitentially pray for the ministry of Heaven on behalf of the four thousand poor fever-stricken and malariapoisoned inmates in our military hospitals at Manila, whose sad, uncomplaining lot is that of brave, patriotic, and dutiful men, unfortunately sent on an unhallowed and un-Republican mission of aggression.

the Ocean

A Leviathan of In the facilities for ocean travel it would be commonplace to say that the century has seen enormous strides since the era of the Collins packets. Even since the days of the last of the paddlewheel steamers the revolution that has taken place in the transatlantic passenger service has been enormous. Only a generation ago it used to be thought a marvel to cross from Liverpool to New York in eight days. Now it can be done in less than five days and eight hours. What feat in the way of reducing even this record will be accomplished by the "Oceanic," the magnificent new steamer of the White Star Line, at present on her way across the Atlantic, we shall soon probably know. Her enormous proportions, together with her powerful engines and the splendor of her

equipments, make her the colossus of the ocean and a phenomenon in modern shipbuilding construction. Larger than the "Great Eastern," she is, unlike that luckless vessel, built on a model that embodies the practical experience and consummate skill of the highest engineering art of to-day. The "Oceanic" is 704 feet in length, and has a displacement of 12,500 tons: laden, it is said that her weight will be close upon 28,000 tons. In spite of this enormous tonnage she is expected easily to steam twenty-three and a half knots an hour. This is equal to the steaming power of the "Lucania," of the Cunard Line, which now holds the record for speed, and two and a half knots per hour faster than the huge "Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse," of the North German Lloyd Line.

The drawback, if there is one, to travel on one of these steam-monsters of the deep is that of living for a week at

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Faction and Municipal Government

The aggressive tendency of town and city municipalities on the subject of taxation at last bids fair to rouse even commercial apathy to resistance. When the evil has been left alone a little longer, and the taxpayer's pocket has been rifled a little further, our communities may waken up to find that citizenship and the franchise are trusts as well as rights, - trusts that should exact fidelity to honor, and rights that should be conserved and keenly looked after. It is one of the curious riddles of the present time how our men of property and intelligence can wrap themselves in apathy and indifference when interests so vital to personal and civic weal are being made in many quarters the sport of corruption and demagogism. Nor is the evil which so loudly calls for the citizen's vigilance confined to one city, or even to a dozen. Throughout the country civic adminis

tration, in many notable instances, may be said to be a vast abuse, calling for the closest scrutiny and not infrequently for the severest indictment. In the management of commercial enterprises it is thought reasonable to expect ordinary integrity; in the management of our city corporations and town municipalities it seems proper to expect no such thing. Whatever our expectations, however, the state of things apparent to even the superficial observer is this: that our municipal boards are too often but gambling-tables, from which the least honorable councillor may sweep the stakes, while perhaps the most unscrupulous of his confrères may himself be the civic head. To this grave condition of affairs on this continent are we come, and by well-understood processes and from easily traceable causes. The correlative of temptation and immunity from restraint and watchfulness is not civic purity and moral health, but vice and weakness; and where there are special temptations there will be insidious vices and moral turpitude.

That to the entanglement of municipal interests with political parties is traceable most of the evils of civic government, no one can honestly disguise from himself. To declaim at party government at this late day may seem a rather visionary act. The still unextinguished common sense of the country will, however, be likely to share our visionary view of the matter if we can get it to see that if its corruption and abuses must ever bring in its train fiscal disaster and the reign of Beelzebub, our cities had better shake off all alliance with it. The ruin which a liaison with faction entails, and the mendacity of its operations, must be pretty well recognized now by all reflecting and observant minds. In the days of the Tweed ring in New York, what but this brought the chief commercial city of the nation to be governed through hideous instruments and by atrocious means? What but this brought to life the municipal thugs that were then strangling the life and plundering the coffers of the city? What but this bedevilled a large portion of the city's press, besmirched the bench, made rogues of many public men, and debauched masses of the people? Protean in its varied forms of corruption and debasement, where did not faction then reach, and what pestiferous influence did it not exert in the community? To party demoraliza

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The remedy for all this is what? Continued supineness on the part of yet untainted wealth and prolonged indifference to the attitude of honest commerce? Not so, indeed! On the contrary, it is surely time for the reputable at least among our public men to awake to consciousness of the danger about them and to listen to the duty-calls of citizenship. The menace to the weal of the community is ever active on the part of certain types of politicians, against whom some of the wholesomer element in the chief cities of the Union are now fighting. Yet it takes much, seemingly, to rouse the citizen to watchfulness against civic turpitude in such acts, for instance, as the threatened Ramapo steal in New York, and like moralities on the part of our Crokers and Platts. In the presence of evils of this sort the highest interests are threatened, the fair future of city life is in jeopardy, and the public weal is in grave danger. Formerly offices of public honor and trust were adorned by men of what is now called old-fashioned Puritanism, who upheld virtue and scorned a wrong. Now who, in the main, have we in their places?-men who still prefer honor to office and sense of duty faithfully performed to the applause of rowdy claqueurs and hungry placemen? Alas!

no.

In their now dishonored seats sit too often the successful demagogue of the hour, the reprobate hack of faction, and that perpetual enemy of the common weal-the trading politician a hateful, disreputable, and dangerous group.

To the thoughtful citizen the question constantly arises, How can such be supplanted by honesty, integrity, conscientiousness, and ready accountability to those who place them in positions of responsibility and trust? The answer is, the utter divorcement of party politics from our civic affairs and the careful exercise of the trusts of the franchise on the part of our responsible classes. The

evils of introducing the political machine into our municipal administration we have surely sufficiently seen, and have, in the enormous debts of some of our cities, not to speak of other indications of harm and loss to the community, abundant evidence of. Realizing this, and making such efforts as are possible to dislodge it from rule in and association with our cities' affairs, it remains but to incite the citizen everywhere to increased interest in municipal concerns. It is a difficult task, no doubt, to evoke patriotism and call forth self-immolation upon our civic altars, though on the national hearthstone there are, in these war times, no lack of victims. But with radical reform in the selection of men for our city executives, as well as in the machinery by which offices of trust are obtained, the interest of the influential classes of the community should be secured. Meeting together on the common ground of fealty to honor, pride of citizenship, and desire to see our civic affairs honestly, capably, and disinterestedly administered, municipal honors would be again worth striving for and service in city interests would regain their once honorable distinction.

The Goethe

Celebration

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The influence to-day of the author of "Faust" and "Wilhelm Meister" is not, we fear, what it was on English and American thought in the early half of the present century. This is not to the discredit of Goethe-far from it: it is due rather to the intrusion of other influences and the broadening out of the literary mind and thought of the time. Nor do Goethe's writings seem to affect the age now as they did in Carlyle's and Emerson's time, or at the period when George Henry Lewes gave to the world his masterly story of the poet-dramatist's life and work. This is no doubt because their novelty has in some measure passed, but more, perhaps, because the age has broken away from his idealism and become practical and even materialistic and sordid. The loss is ours, and the age's, in so far as it is not in sympathy with Goethe's high inspirations and with his noble lessons of reverence and love. How his native land cherishes him and reveres his memory we have just seen in the recent celebration at Frankfort of the 150th anniversary of Goethe's birth. In our next issue we hope to give readers of SELF CULTURE some account of that interesting event.

WOMAN AND THE HOME

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WOMAN'S INVASION OF MAN'S PROVINCE AS BREAD-WINNER

HE question of women's rights has resolved itself in this country so completely that the mere suggestion of misdoubt in such relation only incurs ridicule and amusement. Woman's supremacy is as absolute as man's subjection is abject. Petticoats have indeed triumphed over and usurped the functions of the "trews." Whether such usurpations are public gains, or whether they really constitute a substantial advantage to the female sex in the ultimate, is a very grave and vital question, involving vast and complicated social and industrial interests. It may therefore be as well to premise that we are less concerned about woman's rights than we are about her interests; while we are still more concerned about the general interests of the community. Indeed, both these interests are not only in question, but in actual jeopardy.

It is of the first importance that, in order to preserve and promote the interests of womanhood and of the race, right views should prevail regarding the actual nature and tendencies of women's rights and interests, which are only to be safeguarded and advanced in accordance with the dictates and promptings of reason, and of rightful apprehensions of their real tenor and purport. It is not enough to insist upon the fact of woman's supremacy, and to contend that the practical attainment of her rights is in itself warrant enough of her capacity and competency to advance and to ensure her own special and peculiar interests. For the positive assurance of this depends alone on woman's mental and moral fitness, and upon the adequacy of her conceptions of her rightful relations to the commonwealth, as well as of her own natural functions and responsibilities.

If the "new woman" is but a usurper of man's functions, or but an interloper upon man's traditional domain as bread-earner and head of the family, her career is clearly predestined. This old world of ours cannot long continue to jog along under such unnatural conditions or amid such irregular motions. The crash is inevitable. The " new woman >>> may make a great bustle and appearance for a while in her new career as industrial and commercial competitor and innovator; she may readily enough brush aside her loutish and dejected male rival, who may happen to stand in the way, as she deems, of her immediate interests; she may, for that matter, practically supersede man in nearly all the industrial, commercial, and professional avenues

and vocations of life and wage-earning existence and experience; but she cannot long continue in such a course,- her sands must soon run out. It is not given to such as these to reproduce themselves; nor can the race be perpetuated from such sources. It is therefore manifest that neither woman's interests nor those of the race can be possibly identified as coexistent with modern social and industrial relations and conditions, on the lines of recent innovations and usurpations on the part of "new >>> womanhood. Women's interests, therefore, are not to be confounded with women's rights. There is a wide gulf between them,- at least in so far as they are too generally implied and conjectured as being "in common." But, rightly defined and intelligently apprehended, women's rights and interests are identical. All human interests are coexistent and coeternal with human rights. No man, no woman, no people, can be withheld from their proper rights whose interests do not suffer.

It is always a question as to wherein the rights actually consist, and as to the real nature and purpose of the interests. In order satisfactorily to estimate and decide upon such questions it is of primary importance to consider the entire social and human aspects and bearings thereof in relation to the greatest good of the greatest number. The emancipated slave attains his human rights; but it by no means follows that the moment he is proclaimed a free man and is in full possession of his rights he may be depended on to pursue and promote his own best interests. The greatest kindness that can be shown such a one is to instruct and direct him aright, and to admonish him of the prescribed limits within which his new freedom is to be restricted, in the common interest; and beyond which he must not and cannot be allowed.

So, likewise, with this entangling and bothersome question of women's rights and interests. No right-minded man but will rejoice in woman's attainment of her just rights; but every true man, who cherishes the slightest regard for the rare virtues and qualities of sweet womanhood, must resent and abhor the too manifest tendency of modern social and industrial innovations to unsex and abase our young women. It is not so much the direct tendency as the subvertive influences which this new condition of things has set in operation and indirectly exercised. The father of a family, who, under the promptings of immediate self

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